


Check the Guns at the Door

by quixilvr



Category: Suicide Squad (2016)
Genre: Character pieces, Diablo lives, F/M, mentions of physical abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-21
Updated: 2016-08-31
Packaged: 2018-08-10 05:06:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 3,990
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7831435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quixilvr/pseuds/quixilvr
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Character pieces about the main squad. Not plot-centric at all.</p><p>(Also my first DC fic of any kind, so forgive me for any inaccuracies)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Harley

**Author's Note:**

> I saw Suicide Squad like a week ago, but this ridiculous gallery of rogues kind of took my thoughts hostage. So this is my attempt to deal with that.
> 
> (This is an AU in which the Joker doesn't come back for Harley, because she deserves so much better.)

Her Puddin' is alive.

She finds out two weeks or so after they've shoved her back in her cage, when Griggs comes soldier-marching down the corridor, despite the fact that all he is is a prison warden playing at military status. Harley smiles sharply at him from behind her bars. "Hey, honey. Come to visit?"

"You shut up, Blondie," he snarls, but there's a twitch in his mouth that betrays his satisfaction at this situation.

Harley swings her legs down from her bed, discarding the book she'd been trying to read - she likes to read, she used to read a lot before she met Mr J - and skittering over to the bars of her inner cage. "Aw Griggsy," she whines, "C'mon. I get so bored in here." She curls her hands around the cool steel bars and looks at him as if daring to electrocute her right then and there.

"Yeah, well, I brought something for you to watch," the warden grins. His smile is menacing and not at all pleasant.

Harley tips her head sideways a little, inquisitive, and watches as he produces a tablet from inside his bulletproof jacket. He taps once at the screen and then holds it up for her to see.

It's a news feed, the blonde news anchor onscreen talking about a string of robberies that have taken place in Gotham in the last week, all by masked culprits; a goat, a panda, a blank-faced monster. Minions to the Clown Prince of Crime himself, previously thought deceased.

"Whaddaya think of that, Quinn?" Griggs asks as the clip ends, a sickening smile spread across his face.

Harley bares her teeth at him. "I think Puddin's takin' care of himself," she says, trying not to let her voice betray her happiness. He survived - how had she ever doubted that he would?

Griggs nods, smirks, says, "Yeah that's what it looks like." A pause, and then, "You think he's gonna come rescue you, don'tcha? Gonna bust you out of this little cage and take you away?"

Harley tightens her grip on the bars to stop herself from lashing out like a wild thing. "My Puddin' needs me," is all she replies.

Griggs leans forward, emboldened by two sets of bars between them. "He doesn't though. You're just a toy to him, you know that?"

Harley leans her head against the cold bars and considers his statement. "No," she says after a moment. "He's gonna come for me."

Griggs snorts. "Dream on, sweetheart."

He turns his back on her to walk away, and she swears if she was holding onto those bars any tighter, she'd leave imprints of her nails in the steel.

She's sure he'll come for her; they're a team, aren't they? Her Puddin' always looks out for her. He wouldn't leave her in a place like this. Harley hates it; she's stuck in a cage all day and night, isolated except for the guards who stare as they pass - the only entertainment she ever gets is from watching their faces as she climbs her bars and calls to them, sweet talk and burning insults flying from her mouth, blending together until the guards, little boys who want so badly to be big and tough and mean, are gone and she's still screaming at the grey, empty space outside. Then when they think she's making too much noise, they shock the bars and leave her skin crawling from the jolt, pump her full of sedatives that drown her voices and make her slow.

Why couldn't they have put her in a cell like Floyd and Digger? Or in the basement like Waylon, left to herself in the dark? Or even in that cold little tube they keep Chato in? Somewhere with walls, at least.

She sits on her bed for what must be the rest of the day - or night, her sense of time is so distorted how is she supposed to tell? - and seethes, quietly for once. Rubs at the scars her Puddin' gave to her. This one, a knife slashed across her thigh for talking back. These, yellow marks around her wrists from all the times he'd grabbed them, pressed his fingers too deep into her skin, because she wasn't cooperating, wasn't being who he wanted her to be.

This one, spreading out from the corner of her eye, that she likes to keep covered with eyeliner and bright, pretty colours, because - because…

She must have done something wrong, otherwise he wouldn't have hit her. Maybe she called him Puddin' one too many times, maybe she got in the way. She doesn't know.

Rick shows up, hours or maybe days later, alone. Doesn't say anything for a beat, just stands and waits while Harley stares into space, and then says, "Hey. Harley."

She blinks at him slowly as she rises out of her own mind. "Soldier boy," she smiles, but does not move from her bed. "What's up?"

"We got a mission."

Harley breaks into a grin and claps her hands excitedly. "Yeah? Another world-ending catastrophe ya need us to fix? Or…" She hadn't wanted to say it, but it slips out anyway. "Are we goin' after Mister J?"

Rick looks blindsided for a moment, but manages to compose himself. "What do you know about him?"

She shrugs as if this information hasn't been eating away at her thoughts. "Griggs told me he survived."

Rick frowns, shakes his head a fraction. "Of course he did. No Harley, we're not going to Gotham. There's a cyborg invasion in downtown Central City. Gonna need all of you out of here in an hour."

The guards arrive from behind him then, four of them invading into her space and clamping restraints around her wrists and ankles. She only fights back a little, only bites one, because sue her – she’s _excited._

If Mister J comes to get her, she won’t be here.

He’ll just have to wait for her for once.


	2. Floyd

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Floyd Lawton and the people he loves. Precisely two of them.

Floyd Lawton is a master assassin who never misses his target. Floyd Lawton has threatened mob bosses and held the Bat himself in his line of fire. Floyd Lawton has saved the world from a magical pagan goddess hell-bent on world domination.

And as of today, Floyd Lawton has been deemed unofficial babysitter of Harley Quinn, because Rick is going to have a meltdown if he doesn't have some help in dealing with this squad.

He glances out of the window as the helicopter lifts off the ground, watching the smoke rise from the street. His suit is torn in places. The scratch along his cheekbone stings angrily.

Harley nudges his leg with her bat, and waves it in front of his face when he looks around at her. It's splintered down the middle, a sharp shard of metal wedged into the wood. "Cool, huh?" she says, giving him a manic grin, the tip of her pointy little tongue sticking out the corner of her mouth.

"Sure is," Floyd replies with a nod. He's gotta say, he prefers cyborgs to insane deities. Much easier to kill, even if they can pack a punch.

"It's from one of the bots' heads," Harley adds. "Its brains!" She pulls a face in mock disgust, before breaking down and laughing at her own antics. He looks at her, gaze flicking from her smiling mouth to the white scar at the corner of her eye, barely visible against her pale skin. She smiles playfully. "Now don't stare, honey, it's rude."

He has to laugh at that, and asks, "What's with this sunshine and rainbows act?"

Harley tap-tap-taps her impractical heels on the floor, and shrugs. "We're outta our cages, just beat up a buncha evil robots - no reason not to be happy."

Floyd nods slowly. "Can't argue with that, dollface."

She flashes him one last smile, before getting distracted by Chato dancing fire on his palm.

Across from them, Digger has turned his attention from annoying Croc (who growls warningly if the Aussie so much as looks in his direction) to flirting shamelessly with Tatsu. Rick glares balefully at him for daring to try to chat up his best, and only, bodyguard. Floyd quickly loses interest in the whole scenario.

As usually happens when his mind wanders, it lands on his daughter. He received another letter from her yesterday; she'd written it in purple pen, curly writing filling the paper with her news - _Mom still won't get out of bed most days, but that's okay cause I got all A's on my report card_ \- and questions - _what's Harley Quinn like?_ \- and at the bottom of the page, _I miss you. When are you coming to visit again?_

Zoe's the smartest girl in the world. She deserves everything that he's never going to be able to give her. Isn't that why he's part of this batshit crazy group of criminals playing at heroics? It's all for Zoe - she's worth all the life-threatening missions, all the days spent in solitary confinement, all the sleepless nights listening to Digger yelling at the guards.

It's only when the helicopter is touching down on the airstrip just outside the walls of Belle Reve, that Harley talks to him again. Rick takes control of Croc and Chato, while Tatsu leads Digger out of the copter, keeping her katana casually unsheathed. Floyd makes to follow them when a hand catches his arm and he looks back at Harley, who's looking up at him with serious blue eyes.

"Thanks," she says, "for lookin' out for me back there."

Floyd doesn't ask whether she means fighting the bots together, or before that. Maybe she's talking about Midway City. It doesn't matter either way, because he's starting to realise that he's always going to be looking out for her, in whatever situation they find themselves in.

He just nods, and before he can reply she stretches up and kisses him. It only lasts for a moment, just a short impression of her lips against his, and then she's stepping back and giving him that crazy smile again.

They walk out of the helicopter together, and Rick, standing at the edge of the tarmac leading towards the prison walls, eyes them skeptically. The wardens take Harley forcefully by the shoulders and lead her away - she looks back over her shoulder and winks at Floyd, an action that does not go unnoticed by Rick.

"What is she - " Rick starts, but Floyd cuts him off quickly.

"Listen, I'm gonna need another visit with Zoe," he says. "There's someone I think she should meet."


	3. Digger

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was the first chapter I wrote, because Captain Boomerang is my favourite. Also why this update was so fast... The next updates will probably not come as quickly, because school is school and my sleeping habits are suffering.

Digger doesn’t have many fond memories, but there is one that he returns to often.

He’d just cased a joint in Perth, left his partners behind and hotwired himself the first car he found on escape, a run-down blue pickup splashed with dirt. Made a quick retreat outta the city.

It took him days to get up north, driving along lonely outback roads with nothing but Pinky in the passenger seat and a couple of half-drunk six packs in the foot well. Blasted music from his cassette tape collection, warped ribbon sending the sound twisting in weird directions. Sang along out of key, loud as he could. It felt like he was the only person left on the planet, like he’d driven straight into a deserted dystopian future, Mad Max style.

He’d slept in the bed of the truck in a ragged sleeping bag, staring up at the clear, star-spattered sky until he fell asleep, Pinky tucked in beside him and the rustling sounds of the outback all around.

That’s the recollection he falls back on when life gets him down, and it has got him down since then – since he was younger, when he’d just started to see his brand new moniker in the tabloids and felt drunk on the twisted version of fame he received from a wanted status. When he was braying and cocky and not quite as bitter, and thought that he could fight the world and win.

He lost. Well, mostly. Yeah, he has three consecutive life sentences to serve, but he’s cut thirty years off that through squad missions already. He tries not to think about how long he still has to go.

Waller allows him a bigger cell that feels just a little bit less claustrophobic. It's made out to be a reward for the squad's successful mission, but really he gets to move because he torched his mattress and the scorch marks refuse to fade from the walls. His new cell even has a window, so on the few nights it isn’t raining in this godforsaken swamp and he’s tired himself out hollering abuse at the guards (it’s almost a hobby at this point), he stretches out on his hard metal bed and looks up at the faintly glowing stars. It’s no contest to an outback sky, but he supposes it’s close enough.

They let him keep Pinky, but not much else. When the guards had searched him once they arrived back from their first mission in Midway City, they’d confiscated everything they found in the interior pockets of his jacket; couple of beer cans, wads of money that served as armour as well as riches, all of his boomerangs. He doesn’t like to think about those fuckers with their dirty paws all over his boomerangs.

His jacket sits on his shoulders now, weight reassuring. He takes a swig of his beer and stares at the wall.

The bar is dim and dingy, but none of them care. Floyd managed to bargain some downtime between missions from Waller, which means that maybe once a month they get to leave Belle Reve and descend on an unsuspecting bar in New Orleans. The owners of such establishments are paid generously for clearing them out, and for any damages that may occur – which they will. Sometimes because Digger’s in a mood to antagonise, sometimes because Chato flicks a spark too far, sometimes because Croc just forgets his own strength.

Harley is by the door, idly flirting with one of the guards standing just outside. He shifts away from her slightly, which makes her giggle and drape herself over his shoulder, obviously aiming to make him uncomfortable for her own amusement. Rick whistles, calls, “Harley! They’re prepared to kill you, you know.”

Harley pouts, tipping her head to the side, blonde pigtails swishing. “That’s no fun. You’re no fun,” she tells the guard, before flouncing back inside and settling down at Floyd’s table.

Next to Digger, Tatsu makes a small noise that’s halfway between a muffled laugh and a scoff. He turns to look at her with a smirk that he’d consider charming. She seems to disagree, her expression turning stony as their eyes meet.

“I never got an answer about that drink,” he says, because Digger is nothing if not persistent.

She curls a hand around her glass, brings it to her lips. “No, you didn’t.”

“So ya interested?”

Tatsu only arches an eyebrow and says nothing. Digger shrugs, holds out his beer can to clink against her glass. “Cheers, darlin’.”

It takes a moment, but then her mouth quirks upwards and she nods. Digger feels a little like he’s just coaxed a smile out of a statue.

He’ll consider it a victory.


	4. Waylon

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did someone say Croc and Harley friendship? I think I did.
> 
> Shorter chapter this time, since I'm working on multiple things at once right now, because Quinnshot is actively ruining my life. Should have the last chapter posted in the next couple days.

His name was Waylon Jones by birth, but that name has fallen out of use, and he prefers it that way. There's no use in an irrelevant label reaching for some sense of normality when all anyone else will ever see is scaled skin, jagged teeth, a freakish mistake of evolution.

He's proud of that; proud to be someone that science can't explain. Just because he's a freak, that doesn't mean he can't be beautiful.

No one ventures down to the basement often; it's too dark, echoing and quiet and bleak. Croc likes it down there. He's used to isolation. Honestly, he isn't complaining; he has it better in captivity than he ever did in Gotham's sewers.

Back then, the only way he could make a halfway decent living was to take jobs as bodyguard to the city's criminal elite. He stood, and looked threatening, and smiled sharply at any tattooed little punk that looked his way, and then crawled down below the streets at the end of the night, down to his underground kingdom.

That urban legend flying around about alligators living in the sewers? The people of Gotham took that more seriously than most.

He wouldn't admit it, but he's about as content as he can be at Belle Reve - now, anyway. They don't treat him so badly, just keep at a distance. He has TV now, so he doesn't get as bored as he used to. They throw hunks of raw meat through the hatch in his door every two days. He gets a kick out of scaring the unfortunate guard who's been given the task of feeding him; it's a different person each time. He throws himself at the door, bares his teeth through the bars, snarls like a starving wild animal - and then, when the guard turns tail and flees, goes back to his couch and flicks through channels.

Harley comes to visit him once, out of the blue. She's wearing cuffs around her wrists and ankles, and has three guards flanking her, but she sits right down outside his gate and talks to him for a while. Rick hovers in the background, glaring warningly whenever she makes an erratic hand gesture. 

He doesn't talk much, but she makes up for that. She asks about the little metal figurines on the rickety shelf above his couch (he makes them, when he feels like doing something with his hands), and tells him about her new book and her espresso machine ("You should come visit _me_ sometime, I'll make ya the best coffee you ever tasted!"). Croc grins at that, not meaning to threaten, and Harley doesn't take it that way. She just grins back, her smile as razor-edged as his.

She insists on calling him Waylon. He doesn't protest.

When Rick finally decides that it's time to take her back to her cage and the visit is obviously coming to an end, Croc asks, because the question has been preying on his mind - "Why did you come?"

Rick pulling her to her feet, Harley blinks at him. Her lipstick is smeared across her cheek, bloody and bright. "I get bored. Wanted to see how you were doin' down here. We never get to talk, ya know?" she says, smiling mischievously. "I missed your pretty face."

Croc almost laughs. "Pretty, that's me," he replies.

"And don't ya forget it," Harley calls over her shoulder as a guard prods a metal baton into her back and leads her away.

Once they've disappeared, Rick says, "Don't expect this to be a regular thing. She wouldn't shut up until we let her come down here." Croc doesn't respond, only growls quietly to himself. After Rick leaves, he settles on his couch and distractedly hops through channels while turning the concept over in his mind. Harley sees him as more than teeth and scales and rage. She's most likely the first person to ever do so.

Maybe it makes a difference that she's certifiably insane, but she sees him as he knows he is - in some twisted way, beautiful.


	5. Chato

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chato, we know you're sad and damaged, but now is NOT THE TIME.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to everyone who's read and enjoyed this so far, and I hope you enjoy the last chapter too :)

Chato doesn’t sleep most nights, not really.

He can doze in fits and starts, but as soon as he slides into deeper sleep the flames crackle through his head, the house crumbling into ash around him while his family burns. He jolts awake with smoke in his lungs, staining his body charred and black.

He aches with how much he misses them, the beat in his chest pounding their names unceasingly. He’s never going to make peace with it, that he understands. He tried. He tried to forgive himself, tried to deny his own identity, tried to sacrifice himself as a last resort. It was his talent that saved him; how can a diablo be killed by an inferno? He dragged himself out of the smoking crater left behind by the explosion and fought alongside his squad. Harley hugged him tight and almost burnt herself on his skin when it was all over.

He doesn’t know what he is, whether he’s a demon or a god or something else entirely. He feels too small for the power he’s been given. That’s what onlookers fail to understand, how constricting it is; it makes him feel shrunken and tight and too small for the fire blazing in his bones.

It started out slowly, just a little spark. When he was a kid, maybe four years old, he managed to set the tip of his thumb on fire. His mother had panicked, convinced he would burn, but then he shut off whatever source the flame was coming from and it died on his skin with no trace that it had ever been there. He remembers his abuelita making the sign of the Cross, the first time he heard anyone tell him he was something wrong, ugly, evil.

He remembers lighting fires in the yard, holding his hands dangerously close to the flames at first, eventually gathering the nerve to pass his fingers right through. No burning, no shrivelling skin. No heat.

He remembers being cornered in back alleys by gangs of older boys who saw the small, quiet kid as an easy target. He smiled calmly, felt the heat dancing on his skin, and then burned their hands as soon as they tried to push him around. Threw little fireballs after them as they ran from him, flames licking at their heels.

Word got around. Soon, those who might previously have tormented him for their own amusement, looked at him with something like respect in their eyes. Or maybe fear. In the end, he found it difficult to tell which was which.

Harley finds him in an alley, sitting up against the wall with rough brick pressing into his back. They’re in Metropolis, going up against a group of extremist meta-humans that proclaim to be the future of mankind, and Chato, quite honestly, is not in a place to deal with that right now.

Harley ducks into the alleyway, kneels next to him. Chato looks up at her. She’s taking great, rasping breaths, her forearms lacerated with scratches, dirty and bloody and screaming. “Chato!” she says. “Come on! We’re getting slaughtered!”

He holds up his hands instead, flexing his fingers. “I can’t,” he says, the burning house flickering in front of his eyes. “Oh, don’t gimme that shit,” Harley snaps. “You’re not gonna hurt anyone!”

Chato glances out into the street, where Digger is slashing a boomerang at a man with glowing purple skin, laughing maniacally.

Harley amends her statement. “You’re not gonna hurt anyone on _our_ side.”

When he still doesn’t move, she grabs the shoulders of his jacket and pulls hard, trying to haul him up. “You saved our fuckin’ lives once, so don’t tell me you’re gonna sit here and let this get the better of you.”

She lets go then, gets up off the ground. Faintly, they can both hear Floyd yelling, “Harley! Where’s Harley?!”

She dashes out into battle without another word. After a moment, Chato gets up and follows.

* * *

The square is demolished, rubble piled high, dust settling amidst limp bodies. Chato is sitting on the steps of what remains of a dry fountain, staring at his feet.

One by one, the squad assembles around him, first Harley coming to sit on his left, joined by Floyd, and Katana on his right, Croc and Digger standing. They look out at the ruins silently. Already troops are being called in to clear away the worst of it.

Harley lifts her head from leaning against Floyd’s shoulder, nudges Chato with a foot and gives him her signature manic grin.

“See?” she says. “Wasn’t that fun?”

**Author's Note:**

> Feedback would really be appreciated! My tumblr is also http://quixilvr.tumblr.com/ if anyone wants to talk!


End file.
